Friday, March 10, 2006

Laser powered glider

Solar-powered drone planes could carry on cruising through the night, with a little help from sharp-shooting ground lasers.

Nobuki Kawashima and colleagues from Kinki University in southern Japan recently used a ground laser to power a super lightweight uncrewed aircraft.

The simple propeller-powered aircraft is 78 cm long and weighs just 800 grams. It was tested in a large auditorium called the Osaka Dome, near the university.

The plane used a battery to get up into the air but, at 50 metres, relied entirely on power drawn from a laser aimed at solar panels underneath. The researchers say the drone can keep flying as long as it is in range of a laser. They believe that such aircraft could one day be used to provide round-the-clock communications or ground observation in emergencies.

But the Japanese are not the only ones investigating the approach. A team from NASA's Dryden Flight Center and Marshall Space Flight Center have been working on laser powered drones (like the one above) for some time.

In the future, space elevators will also need to have power transmitted from the ground in order to climb slowly into space.